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History
Since 2011, Caribbean-born choreographer Paloma McGregor has been developing Building A Better Fishtrap, a performance project rooted in the vanishing fishing tradition of her 97-year-old father. The project examines what happens when you leave your ancestral home: What do you take with you? Leave behind? Return to reclaim?
McGregor and her collaborators – from a grandfather in the Bronx to dancers in a studio on Governor’s Island – have spent the past few years exploring the body’s capacity to carry place, memory and experience with it in ways that can transform objects, spaces, collaborators and audiences. Each iteration of the work is created using the Fishtrap Method. Like McGregor’s father’s practice of building traps, these creative Fishtraps are crafted using core physical elements and embodied practices that are customized according to how she visions the work functioning in each space it inhabits. “The doing in this work is its magic,” reflected Ni’Ja Whitson in Contact Quarterly. “And McGregor does both the subtle and grand with such intention, the magic hypnotizes.”
I will never know what it would be like to go fishing with my father. I will never sit with him at the calm waters of Gallows Bay, slowly crafting each trap. Nor do I have any of the last set of traps he built before his hands, now feeling this dry earth for 92 years, got too shaky.
But I do have this kaleidoscope of memories – some experienced, some passed down, some imagined.
From this, I will have to build my own Fishtraps…
I doubt they will be better than his, but they will be mine.
The early years of this project envisioned several culminations including: a first iteration titled Building A Better Fishtrap/Part 1 presented by longtime partner BAAD!; a work-in-progress showing of the installation-based Building A Better Fishtrap/Phase 2 at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange as part of Paloma’s 2-year artist residency there; a commission by Dance Theatre Etcetera to create a site-responsive iteration in Red Hook in October 2015; and an installation along the Bronx River that would be seen from shore and by boat. With each iteration, the hope is to deepen the connections collaborators and audiences have with one another’s legacies and the future of our embattled water spaces.
This iterative creative process has also led to the development of Paloma’s Fishtrap Method – a movement-based practice that builds devised, community-specific performance work. This adaptive methodology for collaboration evolves her father’s approach to engineering fish traps; he used what was available, including repurposed industrial materials, to make traps that lasted longer. Paloma uses her choreographic and organizing practices to galvanize what’s available – people, traditions, spaces – to build art that lures a wide range of participants; considers its function; and has impact long after the project is over.
“With each iteration, the hope is to
deepen the connections
collaborators and audiences have with one another’s
legacies and the future of our embattled water spaces.“
– Paloma McGregor
Fishtrap Iterations
Press
- New York Times
- BOMB Magazine
- Voices from the Bush at The Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center
- The Brooklyn Rail by Nicole Miller
- Contact Quarterly by Ni’Ja Whitson
- InfiniteBody Year in the Arts by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
- InfiniteBody by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
- Alternate ROOTS
- Dance Exchange
Press
- Voices from the Bush at The Urban Bush Women Choreographic Center
- The Brooklyn Rail by Nicole Miller
- Contact Quarterly by Ni’Ja Whitson
- InfiniteBody by Eva Yaa Asantewaa
- Alternate ROOTS
Developmental Residencies
- New York Live Arts Live Feed, 2016-18
- BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 2014-16
- Lower Manhattan Cultural Council at Governor’s Island, 2015
- Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, 2013-15
- Wave Hill, 2013
- iLand, 2012
- E|Merge at Earthdance, 2011
Developmental Residencies
- New York Live Arts Live Feed, 2016-18
- BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange, 2014-16
- Lower Manhattan Cultural Council at Governor’s Island, 2015
- Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, 2013-15
- Wave Hill, 2013
- iLand, 2012
- E|Merge at Earthdance, 2011
Past Performances
october 2022
february 2022
december 2021
june 2021
december 2020
november 2020
october 2020
june 2020
march 2020
october 2019
august 2019
june 2018
july 2017
june 2017
january 2017
october 2016
june 2016
february 2016
december 2015
november 2015
october 2015
may 2015
january 2015
june 2014
may 2014
[PHOTO CREDITS] from top, Paloma McGregor and Oceana James in process in St. Croix (2016) header and carousel images by Quiana L. Adams | Paloma McGregor in Building a Better Fishtrap / phase 2 (2016) by Whitney Browne Photography | Paloma McGregor at Concrete Plant Park (2013) by Charles R. Berenguer Jr. | Jessica Lee, Erica Saucedo, Ricarrdo Valentine, and Christine King in Building a Better Fishtrap in Dance on the Greenway at Dance Theater Ecetera (2015)